A shocking number of ad accounts don't retarget on Google's display network. This is often the cheapest way to help users become more educated on your product.

‍

What's the Google Display Network? It's banner ads on websites, apps, and videos.

‍

‍

We do not recommend running ads on the display network without retargeting.

‍

Problem: Cold traffic drives less sales than warm traffic.

So when you only target cold traffic, your CPAs are going to be higher because it often takes more than one click to get a user interested in using your product. For example,

• 100% Cold Traffic + 0% Warm Traffic = $12 CPA
• 80% Cold Traffic + 20% Warm Traffic = $10.50 CPA

If you aren't running any retargeting at all (including other channels) you should expect a 3% to 15% reduction in CPA. While there are some nuances to running a display ad retargeting campaign, none are essential to making them profitable.

‍

Simple Solution: Create an audience based on all website visitors and run retargeting display ads for this audience.

(Implementation time: 2 to 8 hours depending on your current setup)

• Start by creating a retargeting audience. Step-by-step instructions are below.
• Ensure the retargeting audience is large enough to be used. Minimum 1000 website users.
• Get a free Canva account, and create 3 to 5 banners using the same colors you have on your website and the same Headlines you're using in search ads.
• Set the display ad campaign goal to 'conversions'.
• Redirect 3% to 10% of your current budget towards it. Start low, see the performance, and increment up.

You may not have enough traffic to build effective retargeting audiences.

If this is the case, create the audiences on your Google Ads account anyway, and reassess in a few weeks or months if the audience is large enough.

‍

Advanced Solution: Make specific ad creatives to help move potential and free users along the buying journey.

(Implementation time: Several days)

‍

At any point in someone's journey discovering your product, specific hooks and call-to-actions will make your product stand out.

Effectively seeding this information at the right time, could be the difference between a lifetime user or someone who visits the website once, and never returns. Consider this, let's say we are a CRM Software.

‍

A potential customer who's never heard of you needs to know:

• You're trusted, and lots of people like you. Before they need to know,
• You natively integrate with XYZ provider.

If they do not trust you, who cares if they know about your integrations?

‍

Explanation

You're marketing should reflect the users' journey.

‍

When you make display ad creatives, you need to think about this in the context of your potential user's journey around signing up and purchasing:

1. If they only visited once, why should they revisit the website?
2. If they have visited several times, why should they should sign up?
3. They sign up for a free trial / freemium...
4. In the first 10 days of free usage, what can you teach them that gets users to use the product more?
5. If they use the product once and don't return, how can reenergize their interest?
6. When they reach an activation milestone, what gets them to pay?

‍

Each of the items above represents a new set of possible hooks, calls-to-actions, and strategies for re-engaging people to try and buy your product.

We don't love Performance Max campaign types for retargeting.

They work and we use them sparingly, because you don't learn anything about your customers and a penny spent in the Gmail "Sponsored" Tab is a penny wasted.